Entries in earth
(60)

Rare Earth Elements make up a large portion of our high tech equipment and the demand for the elements is only increasing. This infographic, published by Buy Metal Online, has that examines the situation and the troubling shortages in our future.

Here we have an infographic that takes a look at rare earth elements (REE) including information about what they are, what we use them for, who’s producing the World’s REEs and more.

Good topic with clear visualizations and attractive illustrations. They have a lot of valuable information packed into this design. However, in my opinion, there’s way too much text included, with multiple paragraphs explaining each section. In my experience, if readers see this much text in an infographic, they are likely to perceive it as too complicated and detailed. They’ll probably move on without ever reading it. Infographics are supposed to be simple explanations that are quick and easy to understand.

What’s the future of the human race and our beloved planet Earth? The Timeline of the Far Future from the BBC plots out predicted events for the next 1,000, 1,000,000 and up to 100 Quintillion years into the future!

As it is the beginning of the year we at BBC Future think it’s the perfect time to look ahead.

First, we brought you a prediction of the forthcoming year. Then we brought you a timeline of the near future, revealing what could happen up to around 100 years time. But here’s our most ambitious set of predictions yet – from what could happen in one thousand years time to one hundred quintillion years (that’s 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 years). As the song says, there may be trouble ahead…

They had to use an exponential scale, so each inflection point represents a jump in the timeline scale by a factor of 10. The icons are small, and some are hard to figure out. They had enough space they could have made those larger. The circles are also sized by the magnitude of each event, but these seem to be arbitrary.

It’s worth noting one of the sources in the footer lists Out of Thin Air as a source. This not a claim that they made up the information. It’s actually a book titled Out of Thin Air that some of the information was pulled from. I had to look it up, but it’s a valid reference.

Nice to know that MacBook will still be around for 100,000 years! Definitely looks like we’re in for a rocky ride though…

Climate change is a complicated, and sometimes controversial, global topic. I really like this data visualization of 2,000 Years of Continental Climate Changes that was included as part of the report published by the “2K Network” of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) Past Global Changes (PAGES) project.

Thirty-year mean temperatures for the seven PAGES 2k continental-scale regions arranged vertically from north to south. Colors indicate the relative temperature. The most prominent feature of nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is the long-term cooling, which ended late in the19th century. North America includes a shorter tree-ring-based and a longer pollen-based reconstruction. Modified from: PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013, Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia, Nature Geoscience, DOI:10.1038/NGEO1797.

Each color band represents a 30-year mean temperature found on each continent. Their choice of data visualization method is very compelling, and visualizes a huge amount of data in a small space.

I also love that a good data visualization can attract attention and build awareness all by itself.

How Far is it to Mars? by David Paliwoda is a fantastic animated, interactive infographic website that shows the viewer the scale of the distance to the Moon and to Mars as measured in pixels. David calls this a motion-infographic.

Simon Scarr is doing some great work as the Graphics Director at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Last month he designed Close Encounters, the full-page visualization of the Near-Earth-Objects that have passed within the Moon’s orbit (or will pass by) from 1910-2189.

A 45-metre-wide asteroid came remarkably close to Earth on Friday, even closer than communication and weather satellites. It was be the nearest known close miss for an object of its size.

When this story was first mentioned in the newsroom, a few days before the incident, it sparked debate. People were intrigued as to how close these objects come to Earth. How many pass by? And how fast or large are they? A perfect opportunity for an interesting graphic.

As usual, NASA had every piece of information we needed. Their Near-Earth Object Program was established in 1998 to help coordinate, and provide a focal point for the study of comets and asteroids that can approach the Earth’s orbit. They have data sets on all close approaches to Earth since 1900 and projected forward to 2200.

This is a beautiful design that shows the distances to scale by placing them in between the Earth and the Moon, and the horizontal lines show the relative speeds of all the objects. Orange lines are future, predicted passes.

Simon has posted more behind the scenes information about putting this infographic design together on his own blog. I highly recommend the post, and you can check out his other work.

Key ingredients in the iPhone include so-called rare-earth minerals, elements whose properties make it light, bright and loud.

The key message in this design is obviously a wanring to readers that their iPhones (let’s be honest, this applies to any modern smartphone) are using rare materials that may be hazardous and cause environmental problems when they are mined.

The design ends abruptly, without an ending. At the end should be a few key things that are missing:

What’s the conclusion or call-to-action? What should readers do now that they understand the key message? Is the desired action recycling, participating in protests or choosing a different phone?

Data sources? This design accompanied a full-text article, but because infographics are shared independently they need to list the data sources for transparency and credibility.

URL to the infographic landing page so readers can find the original story and full-size infographic?

Today (Nov 14th) will be a total eclipse of the Sun, and the Solar Eclipses infographic from turu does a great job with visually explaining eclipses and sharing the statistics from prior eclipses.

The total solar eclipse of 2012 is set to be a spectacular event. Occurring just after sunrise on November 14 (local time), the eclipse will be best viewed from Cairns in Australia. Already a popular tourist destination, the 2012 eclipse is expected to flood the coastal city with thousands of domestic and international visitors.

The infographic provides a definition of a solar eclipse as well as information on the Australia 2012 eclipse. It offers an insight into past solar eclipses, noting duration of totality and effects on local tourism.

With a number of events scheduled such as the Solar Eclipse Marathon and the Eclipse 2012 Festival, Cairns aims to cater to this expected influx of tourists. Renowned for its sunshine, Cairns is expected to be a prime location to view the 2012 eclipse. The next opportunity to view a total eclipse in Australia will be in the year 2028, making this year’s event truly special.

A good design that tells a good story. In the footer should be a Copyright statement, and the URL to the infographic landing page so readers can find the origial full-size version.

Designed by Karl Tate, Our Amazing Planet: Top to Bottom is a cool infographic that looks at the scale of things from the upper atmosphere to the deepest ocean depths.

The infographic is HUGE (14,677 pixels tall), and that keeps it accurate to the scale. It’s unreadable when the entire infographic is viewed on the screen, and that adds to the readers grasp of how big this scale really is.

It’s also timely with recent events, showing the depth of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill, and drilling depth. You can view the entire image on OurAmazingPlanet.com.

Emily Schwartzman has won the GOOD contest to design an infographic about the earthquake impact to Haiti. A high-resolution version is available on the GOOD site.

We’re proud to announce the winner of our latest infographic contest, where we asked readers to design an infographic about the recent earthquake in Haiti. We at GOOD conferred with Aaron Perry-Zucker of Design for Haiti, and we’ve come to a decision.

Emily Schwartzman—whose graphic, “Aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake,” clearly and concisely depicts both the human toll of the earthquake and the scope of the earthquake itself—is our winner. Schwartzman will take home our prize package, including a GOOD T-shirt and a free subscription. You’ll be able to see her infographic in print in our next issue as well as on the Design for Haiti site.

Michael Paukner has created a great infographic, Big Brothers: Satellites Orbiting Earth. Visually showing which countries own all of the space junk currently orbiting Earth (functional, dysfunctional and floating debris). We apparently have Saturn-envy as we attempt to create rings around our planet.

You’ve got to feel bad for countries like Chile, who used to have a single working satellite in orbit, but the warranty ran out and it doesn’t function anymore.